1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to an information recording, storage, retrieval and relay system, and particularly to an information recording, storage, retrieval and relay system for enhancing communication between teacher and parent, and among teaching faculty members themselves, regarding student performance, behavior and attendance in the educational environment.
2. Description of Prior Art
The majority of those who find themselves dealing in the modern affairs of business and the interactions of twentieth century society are well acquainted with what have come to be known facetiously as The Three Classic Lies, the first two of which are, "The check's in the mail," and, "I already gave at the office."
Unfortunately, in the realm of public education and parenting there has arisen another trio of standard deceptions that might best be depicted as follows: #1 "But, Mom, I don't have any homework tonight." #2 "But, Dad, I've got to watch this video of `Wuthering Heights` because the dumb teacher didn't tell us about the book report until just yesterday, and they're out of it at the library." #3 "No sweat, Mom, I'm doing just fine in geometry. Look, I really need to get to the mall tonight, okay?"
Certainly there are variations on the above theme, a fact to which those skilled in the art of dealing with youth will readily attest. However, if the youthful creativity invested in devising such variation were instead directed toward actually completing assigned school work, parents, teachers and, most of all, students themselves, would benefit remarkably.
Despite tremendous technological progress that has taken place in the western world over the last two decades, various social and economic changes over the same period have produced certain negative impacts on the structure and function of educational systems, most notably in the United States.
With unanimous agreement educators now acknowledge that one of the most fundamental problems resides in the fact that the level of communication and interaction that once existed between teacher and parent has dropped to an unprecedented low. This decline can be attributed in large part to the fact that the number of families in which both father and mother are required to work outside the home has increased, while teachers find themselves carrying larger numbers of classes as well as additional custodial, bureaucratic and administrative duties extraneous to their primary teaching functions.
The phrase "teacher burnout38 can appropriately be adapted to include "parent burnout" in describing this recent situation in which neither party seems to have the opportunity nor persistence required to establish the one-to-one communication that leads to effective collaboration. The victims of this growing distance between teacher and parent are the students themselves, who now emerge from high school with the lowest levels of competency and literacy ever recorded in our history of public education.
As there has been no practical method offered for effectively correcting or altering the structures and scheduling of our working society, any effort to rehabilitate collaboration between teacher and parent must now focus on advanced and innovative ways to re-establish communication between the two.
The first appearances of any organized or structured efforts to bring about teacher-parent communication certainly include the student report card, mailed at regular intervals, as well as parent-teacher conferences scheduled occasionally through the school year. Unfortunately, such meetings have been generally infrequent, and during the lengthy intervals between report card mailings there have been many instances in which a student's performance has declined considerably while the parent has remained unaware, awaiting the next report card.
With the intention of establishing a telephonic means for exchanging student-related information between teacher and parent one might at first be tempted to turn to several existing arrangements, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,320,256; 4,640,991; 4,799,254; and 4,820,167. Though the inventions may accomplish their individual functions adequately, such systems, even if their most useful features are optimally combined to function as a telephone "homework hotline," can only fail to deliver the high performance that should ideally be required in today's educational environment.
Recent versions of such "homework hotlines" as described in the May 6th, 1990 London, England Sunday Express in a report by William Massie and in the Jun. 24th, 1990 Maryland Sun in a report by Ann Lo Lordo are, themselves, limited in function. Such telephone "hotlines" provide to the caller no more than pre-recorded announcements of homework assignments, lunch menus, and in some cases notifications regarding student attendance problems. Though that kind of information can certainly be important, unfortunately "homework hotlines" not only fail to deliver it efficiently and reliably as a result of inherent limitations, but also create several new problems in the process:
(a) A considerable amount of additional time and effort must be invested in such a "hotline" arrangement on the part of teachers and other school staff members to provide the voiced recordings of homework assignment announcements. In many cases to produce such recordings it is first necessary for each teacher to submit a homework assignment in written form to a designated staff member. The staff member must then sort and arrange all such written assignments received; enter by keypad for each assignment the specified code to identify the teacher and respective class period number; then read the assignment aloud into a voice recorder. This cycle of action must be repeated for every assignment submitted until all are finally recorded.
In other cases each teacher must locate an available telephone, place a call to gain access to the "hotline", enter tone digit codes to signify both teacher identification and the particular class period for which the assignment is intended, enter a recording command, then announce the assignment. This procedure must be repeated for each and every class period in which an assignment has been given. It is improtant to note that the making of such recordings requires redundant effort on the part of the teacher, given the fact that the homework assignments must also be announced in class, which in itself presents another problem:
(b) Because the recordings of homework assignments must be made separately and outside of the classroom, the "hotline" creates the possibility of inadvertant discrepancies occurring between the live classroom versions of such announcements and the recorded "hotline" versions.
(c) Such student-accessible "hotlines" have lulled many students into the assumption that, because they can call for their homework after school, they need not pay attention in class to their teachers as the assignments are given. Later in the evening those students who were inattentive now try to call the "hotline" to hear the assignments they should have noted earlier in class. Moreover, such unnecessary and excessive student use causes frustration among parent-users as they fail in their attempts to gain access to the "hotline" information.
Furthermore, such student reliance on "hotlines" gives rise to a new problem as evidenced by a report in the Chicago Tribune, written by columnist George E. Curry and ironically entitled "`No homework` excuse passe." In the report an English teacher reveals the new excuses now being given by students who rely on the "hotline" for their assignments: #1 "My phone is broken." #2 "I called and the line was busy." #3 "I called and I didn't get an answer." Thus it appears that such "hot lines," contrary to their purpose, have actually spawned yet another trio of lies as noted above, these being directed at the teachers instead of the parents.
Because of the inherent limitations of such "hotlines" several additional problems remain unaddressed:
(d) One major problem is of particular frustration to the teacher, who has no practical way of using such a "hotline" to communicate to a parent vital information concerning a specific student. The teacher, for example, cannot use the "hotline" to relay student-specific information regarding behavior in class, academic performance and personalized study suggestions. As a result the parent may remain unaware of a student problem that might otherwise be corrected in a timely manner.
(e) Another problem left unaddressed is found in the fact that "hotlines," because of inherent limitations, are incapable of determining whether incoming calls are being placed by parents or students, such inability resulting in false indications of parent participation. Furthermore, in the event in which a parent actually does call, such a "hotline," incapable of identifying the caller, cannot therefore document the inquiry and attribute it to that specific parent. As a result, the school staff can be placed in a vulnerable position in the event of a complaint alleging failure on the part of the school to provide information to that parent regarding assignments. Without documentation of that parent's "hotline" participation, or lack of same, the school has no reliable way of refuting such allegations.
The failure to identify telephone participants presents further problems when such "hotlines" are used in conjunction with common computerized automatic dialers intended to telephonically inform parents of their student's absence from school. Although such dialers in some cases have been an improvement over mailed absence reports in regard to speed, they nevertheless present several major problems in operation and reliability for both schools and parents:
Considerable time and effort is required, first by the teacher, who must produce a handwritten report identifying each absent student; second, by the student or courier assigned to personally carry the written report to the school administration office; third, by the staff member, who must compile the absence reports, then transcribe by keyboard in the format required by the automatic dialer the names of those students reported absent.
By matching the transcribed student names to home phone numbers on file the automatic dialer is then able to place the appropriate calls. Such calls are commonly placed during early morning or early evening with the assumption that those are the times when parents are most likely to be home; unfortunately the dialer frequently fails to reach those parents.
The majority of such failures can be attributed to the ease with which students, themselves, intercept the anticipated calls simply by picking up the phone, pretending to converse, then hanging up. By doing so the students thwart the intent of the automatic dialer, in essence "beating the system."
(f) Another problem yet unaddressed results from the inability of such "hotlines" to be student-specific. This in turn causes frustration for the parent who, after managing to gain access, must not only execute by way of tone digit signals several menu selections, but must also then listen to a number of pre-recorded homework assignments and other announcements, many of which do not pertain to the student in question.
Furthermore, such lack of student-specificity precludes the possibility of a parent being able to request, let alone obtain, vital and relevant information such as a particular student's current academic performance rating which, as earlier indicated, cannot even be entered into the "hotline" arrangement by the teacher in the first place.